A lot has been going on the past couple of months.

I applied to the Graphic Design for Marketing (GDMA) program at Kwantlen and it was a rigorous process. I went to the info session, having seen it on their web site the same day as they were having it late that evening. I met several of the instructors and they were all nice. It felt like a place I belonged. So, I submitted my application and waited to hear back as to whether my high school transcript would be good enough for me to meet the English requirement. It did. Duh.

I met with Ken, the program coordinator a couple of weeks later, just to get his opinion about whether I would gain anything from the program or whether he thought it’d be a waste of time based on my portfolio and experience.

Next, I had to prepare a portfolio of different types of work that I’d done, so I built a web site with samples of my identity, photography, web design and school projects, along with some sketches for a couple of the projects I’ve done with the finished graphics so they could see my process and the end result.

I waited to hear from them about whether I was going to be invited for an interview and was horrified when I got an email saying I wasn’t. I was at work that day and I rushed downstairs and called Ken’s office to ask what had happened and tell him that I was really upset. I decided I was going to talk to him the following Monday when I went in to pick up my portfolio.

I drove out to the campus in Richmond and when I got parked I saw I had a voice message from someone at Kwantlen. It was Ken and he said that they had decided to let me come for an interview and to call to make an appointment ASAP. I went upstairs and saw him in the hall and he told me to make my appointment for that Thursday. He told me I should bring in some printed pieces because those are easier to review.

I spent the whole Wednesday evening before my interview preparing a print version of the portfolio I’d put in website form. I was nervous going in, but not overly so. I was just glad to get the chance to plead my case and not be rejected outright. When I went in, they sent me into a room and gave me an hour or so to fill out a questionnaire and to do a rapid visualization exercise where I had to come up with a new name and slogan for a fictitious company and sketch out an ad and flyer for it. The “owner” was a guy with an Italian name so I came up with Michelangelo Landscape Design – a work of art in your own backyard.

After that, I went in to meet with three of the instructors, one of which (thank god) was Ken. They said they were going to do my interview a little differently than most applicants and asked me to tell them about one of my projects. I talked to them about the NALH stuff and how we came up with the logo, business cards, etc and showed them a bunch of the other stuff I did around that.

The instructor on the far end of the table from me shook his head and asked me why I wanted to go to school there, considering I was showing them a graduate + level project to get INTO the program. I laughed and said that I thought that might come up and that I was well-prepared to answer. I told them I would like to teach, but can’t do that without credentials myself. Also, I said that I know there are things I still don’t know and I’d like to fill in the technical gaps in my knowledge.

So, I finished up the interview and felt really good about it. I still had to wait about two weeks to hear  back from them as they were making their decisions based on the interviews they’d done. About a week and a half later, I got an email from a lady at Kwantlen saying I was being offered a seat in the program. I was so excited!!! It’s weird because the idea of me actually not going into the program in September just never really seemed like something that would actually come to pass. The lack of invite to the interview at first just seemed like it was a mistake and that’s not how things were meant to be. Turns out, that’s true! YAY!!!

Classes start on September 6, and I’ve paid my $250 registration deposit already, so just gotta find out what the next step is in the process. It’ll be nice to know what my schedule is going to be. I need to talk to Ken about which classes I should try to challenge via Prior Learning Assessment, so I won’t have to take a full 5 courses, which I think would be stressful. Though, I might consider taking either an elective and a marketing class or something like that to fill in the classes I’d bypass via PLA in order to get through the program faster. We’ll see!